WRO on Tour #13

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Huilinki Café, Ii (Finland)
screening: Mar 27, 2018 / 6 PM

Water… A fundamental element for all forms of life, a cultural interface, a transformable material, a natural archive. Why is water so important in today’s world? How does it reflect the changes taking place in a global scale? How can environmental and biological art adapt to the transforming surrounding and interact with it? These are some of the questions that the Art Ii Biennial 2018: States of Matter addresses, the inauguration of which will be announced during the “Tidal Wave” WRO on Tour #13 screening.

The program features a selection of video works in which the element of water connects various aspects of reality, ranging from such phenomena as culture and its utopias, or the digital shift to self-destructive policies and biases. Unveiling the beauty of seemingly abstract nature in the man-made environments (in the works of Sakurai and Swoboda), spotlighting artistic and technological appropriations of cultural heritage and documentary footage (Yamauchi, Zachodny), and experimental approach to urgent social issues resulting from the xenophobic political agendas (Hecher + Keim, Arvers), the screening offers a close look at an approaching tidal wave of changes that might sweep the humans away from the surface of the planet if we don’t open our eyes and develop more empathy towards the nature and ourselves being inseparable part of it.

The Art Ii Biennial addresses current themes, participates in the public discussion through the methods of art and combines the cultural heritage of Ii with the contemporary art. A crucial part of the event is to facilitate interactions between the local community and international art professionals through communal activities. The northern landscape and humanity have been the essential topics of Art Ii Biennial over the years. The AIB’s outdoors site-specific art works are mostly located at the environmental art park and the village center. Temporal, local and cultural conditions affect the production of these artworks. One of the main values of the event is ecological, economical, social and cultural sustainability.

PROGRAM:

Hiroya Sakurai (JP), The Stream VI, 2015, 6:52
Beate Hecher (AT) + Markus Keim (IT), Mediterranean Sea, 2016, 9:00
Isabelle Arvers (FR), Heroic Makers vs Heroic Land, 2016, 10:56
Shota Yamauchi (JP), Tidal Wave, 2016, 8:15
Katharina Swoboda (AT), Penguin Pool, 2015, 3:20
Jacek Zachodny (PL), Go Back to Europe, 2015, 7:20

preparation and presentation: Agnieszka Kubicka-Dzieduszycka, Dominika Kluszczyk